


Blast of Genius

by Winterling42



Series: The Woods [4]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, First Kiss, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:19:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Ral gets a chance to tag along with Jace as the Guildpact, and along the way he has a chance to test his thesis. Doesn't everyone have to prove their PhD under life-threatening circumstances?





	1. Chapter 1

Ral met Jace outside of the maintenance building on the west side of campus. It was hard to think of a creepier place to meet at ten o’clock at night, since the only light was the buzzing LED outside the main door. As usual, moths and other insects had clustered on the bulb so thickly that it was barely visible, and the hissing roar of the boiler made it hard to hear anyone approaching.

Earlier today Ral had gotten a text from an unknown number. STILL INTERESTED IN STAYING IN THE LOOP?

Ral had immediately texted back: IN CLASS W/ZEGANA. SOME OF US ARE FULL TIME STUDENTS.

He might have undermined this by adding, OBVIOUSLY IM INTERESTED. DETAILS LATER?

And details had arrived. The maintenance crews were run mostly by Golgari contractors, and were one of the guilds that had little interaction with students in general. Apparently some of them had been selling shrooms on the side, though Ral was a little doubtful of this being the only reason Jace was here. Surely somebody called ~the Living Guildpact~ had better things to do with his time than bust college drug rings. Anyway, the maintenance building was the easiest way to access the tunnels the Golgari used as a base of operations. When Ral had asked how far the tunnels went, Jace had replied only with the words TOO FAR. Which, in retrospect, was probably meant to intimidate him. Jace did that sometimes.

“I guess you got my message.” Like now. Jace stepped out of the shadows wearing the most ridiculous spelunking outfit Ral had ever seen, complete with silver cufflinks.

“ _Yes_ , I got your message Beleren. Clearly. I also texted you back to confirm. What are you _wearing_?”

“What?” Jace glanced down at his leather shoes and blue pinstripe suit. “It’s fitted.”

Ral, in his ratty plaid and jeans, walked over and grabbed Jace’s wrist. “Cuff links?” he asked. “Really?”

“This isn’t an Izzet all-nighter, Zarek.” Jace jerked his hand away, scowling. “ _Some_ of us have reputations to uphold.” Ral forced himself not to reach out again, just to feel the comforting weight of Jace’s hand in his.

Instead, he snorted and bowed dramatically. “Very well, O Guildpact. After you and your sterling reputation.”


	2. Chapter 2

While running full tilt down mysterious tunnels that smelled like dead animal, Ral reflected on his habit of always being right. Mostly, he agreed with himself that it was a good thing, and also that he should have better judgment than to join Jace Beleren on a nighttime stroll through the maintenance tunnels. Well, only half of him agreed with that second part. It was the half where he kept his common sense, which was to say it wasn’t a very _large_ part of him.

The Golgari might have been selling shrooms on the side, but their main order of operation had been kidnapping students and putting them in some kind of moldy cocoon. Ral hadn’t really wanted to see more than that. Of course Jace had waltzed in anyway, like kindly scolding the ooze people was going to do anything. Funnily enough, it _had_ seemed to stymie them for a few minutes. Jace’s voice echoed unnaturally in the cloying room, and everyone had stopped their mold work to look at him.

That had pretty immediately been followed by the lobbing of acidic slime in their direction, but Ral had to hand it to him. It had worked for about five seconds.

Ral pulled Jace down behind the solid steel pipe just as something large and semi-solid splattered the floor next to them. “Now is _not_ the time to be playing catch with the friendly slime people,” Ral said, pretending he wasn’t out of breath. There wasn’t much cover for the next few hundred feet of tunnel, long enough that they’d get hit by at least some of the nasty black stuff currently sizzling on the concrete.

“Wasn’t really trying to,” Jace gasped back. He leaned back just a little to see where the former janitors were, only to duck back into Ral’s hiding spot as another glob of slime went whizzing by. “No way we make the next corner. Not with their aim.”

“It does seem to be improving,” Ral mused. “Maybe we should start a baseball league.”

“Brilliant,” Jace snapped. “And what will we do next, teach them juggling? Do you have any serious ideas, Ral, or do you _want_ to be reduced to simple carbon chains?”

“I do have an idea,” Ral said slowly. “But I’m not sure it’s a serious one.”

Jace pulled himself another few inches closer as the latest slime bomb spattered off the side of the pipe. Ral couldn’t help noticing the space (or lack thereof) between them, and how Jace tugged at the edges of his hair when he was about to freak out. “Right now I might be willing to take a non-serious idea. As long as it’s not juggling.” Jace bit his lip and glanced towards Ral, one hand holding his stupid bangs back from his face. “What do you—“

Ral kissed him. He was just as surprised about it as Jace was, really. One second his mind was racing, and then it was very, very occupied. Jace tasted like coffee and cream, his mouth making an inviting little ‘oh’ as he figured out what was going on.

“For luck,” Ral pulled himself away after a minute. He couldn’t seem to stop grinning. Jace just stared at him. “Luck for a _very bad idea.”_ With those last few words Ral was already throwing himself out into the corridor, ready to try one last impossible experiment.

His thesis stated that electricity left traces of itself behind. That the more often electrons traced that route, the more likely they were to do so again. He was a physicist, not a wizard. That was why he felt lightning singing in his blood; not because of fate or something as unbelievable as magic, but because he’d been struck when he was fifteen. Still, when he snapped his fingers there in the sewer under Ravnica, he didn’t really know what would happen. Science was just educated guesses, after all.

Lightning flared like a flash bomb. Ral saw it in impossible clarity, light and energy and power running from his fingers to the Golgari goons in crooked spirals. The thunder that followed was enough to send him flying, and a sudden cramping pain shot through his arm. The one with the scar.His head pounded with the intensity of a year’s worth of migraines all happening at once.

A blurry face wandered into his greying vision, and Ral laughed. He couldn’t really hear it, but he felt his lungs moving. That was a good sign. “Remember to tell me that I kicked ass in the morning.” Ral tried to pop his ears to make the ringing stop, but that only made it worse.

Jace, above him, said something that sounded like “Burghl hrrul arumpnpa,” except it was muted under the steady ringing.

“Yeah,” Ral said, distracted by the way his peripheral vision was developing black and gold sparkles. “I’m just gonna pass out for a little bit now.”


	3. Chapter 3

Everything got vague after that. Ral remembered stumbling back out into the fresh air, leaning drunkenly on Jace’s shoulder and muttering equations that he couldn’t solve to keep himself conscious. Somewhere between irrational number sets and the digits of pi, they got to a door and Jace knocked. The sound blew equations right out of Ral’s head and he moaned a wordless protest.

“Sorry, sorry.” Jace was talking to at least two of the people standing in the doorway, but Ral couldn’t open his eyes for very long before the migraine clawed them closed again. His head was _killing_ him. This was worse than the Red-Bull-and-coffee hangover.

“What exactly is going on here?” Later Ral would recognize Officer Starch Pants, but at the moment the only thing that concerned him was how _loud_ she was being.

Jace replied in a whisper and whatever he said won them admittance. Ral dragged himself down the hallway and onto a couch, mostly because Jace put him there and let him collapse. The conversation above him floated somewhere between dream and reality. Ral was never certain, afterward, how much of he’d actually heard and how much he’d made up.

“What’s going on Jace? Who is this, and why is he on my couch?”

“I wouldn’t have brought him if I had any other choice. Your place was closest and you know I can’t drive.”

“Guildpact, you were supposed to ask Jarad’s men to stop selling hallucinogenics to the students, not launch an assault on the Undercity.”

“Maybe you should get better information, Officer, before sending in the Guildpact. The Golgari aren’t selling to students, they’re kidnapping them! Explain _that_ to the Senate. And make sure Ral doesn’t die. At least not before he defends his thesis.”

Ral, semi-conscious on the couch, only smiled.

 

Ral slept through most of the next day—he woke up once, mid afternoon, stumbled around the room wondering why the bathroom wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and then fell back asleep until Officer Starch Pants got home at 5:35.

“Oh good,” she said, after dropping a giant bundle of keys into a glass dish as loudly as possible. “You’re awake.”

“I am now,” Ral grumbled, staring at her balefully with his post-lightning headache slamming through his brain like the worst tequila hangover ever. “Who are you again?”

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced. My name is Lavinia Titus of the Tenth. _You_ are Ral Zarek, an Izzet grad student. You shouldn’t be here at all, but my…partner apparently has a soft spot for pyromaniacs.”

“The correct term would be ceraunomaniac, and from what I understand Jace is more like your supervisor than your partner.”

Lavinia gave him a long, silent Look that might have impressed someone else, but Ral’s dad already took first place for king of significant Looks. He could still nail Ral with a disappointed stare from twenty yards. As it was, Ral raised one eyebrow and waited for the inevitable defeated sigh. Officer Titus surprised him though—she put her heels together and doubled down on the Look.

“Subsection ten of edict eight in the second Guildpact states that it is illegal for guildmages to accept aid from opposing guild members without completion of form eight dash three B. Which I have _not_ filed today, at Jace’s request. That being said, both you and he are going to have to sign a lot more forms before I’m willing to go one step further in helping either of you. As far as I’m concerned, both you and Jace are insane for antagonizing Ravnica’s most dangerous beings for _fun_.” She said that last word as if it was a criminal activity in and of itself. As much as Ral knew about the written Guildpact, it might be.

“Well you don’t have to worry about form eight three d or whatever,” Ral swung his legs off the couch like he was going to stand up, though he thought better of it after the resulting brain-pulse. “I’m _not_ an Izzet guildmage. I haven’t even talked to the Prof about…this.”

“Hmph.” Titus disappeared down the hall, and Ral put his head in both hands, trying to rub away some of the hangover. He sat that way until a tall glass of water appeared at the edges of his vision, held by a pale hand with perfectly square nails. On his way to take the glass Ral noticed the first sign of life he’d seen in this tidy apartment.

“You wear socks with the word ‘shit’ on them?” To be precise, one sock said, ‘ _don’t make shit up’_ and the other one said, ’ _so I don’t step in it._ ’ They were a hideous pink color that reminded him of toxic frogs.

“Drink the water, Zarek.”

Ral managed to drink most of the glass while Titus puttered around her apartment, appearing and disappearing every five minutes to check on him. Every rug was straight on the floor, every chair and table exactly aligned. Even the bookshelves were organized by subject and author. Blue and white porcelain gleamed on the tables and walls. There wasn’t even a TV. It was, except for the socks that he kept glimpsing, the dullest house he’d ever been in.

“The sun’s setting,” Titus said from the doorway. She had her arms crossed and her face set at ‘suspicious.’ “You should be safe getting back to your place.”

“What, no police escort?” Ral sniped back because he didn’t know how to say thank you to a complete stranger who wore toxic pink socks and tossed around ‘illegal’ and ‘guildmage’ in the same sentence. Titus only rolled her eyes.

“Some free advice, Zarek? Talk to Mizzet. He’s the one who put you on the guildmage list.”

“He did _what_?”


End file.
